I know the prices of weapons vary according to their condition and you can make a trading sub-game out of that if you have high repair skill. And I realize that there are some limits to what the games' engine can do. But I really wish there could have been a way for the prices of non-weapon items to vary from one place to another. It would really justify having a trader character and make such characters more interesting to play. Having a base price that varies according to the scarcity or surplus of an item in a location would really make fore a great trading sub-game. And it would be a good mechanism for getting materials more evenly distributed throughout the region (something "the invisible hand" has always been good at.) Any thoughts on this (and mod suggestions?)

Certainly a proper economy would make things more interesting. I'm hoping to see mods for such a thing eventually, if there isn't one already.


But New Vegas isn't the only RPG that fails in this regard. In fact, can anyone think of an RPG that does have a dynamic economy? I can't.

The more complex the economy the more likely it can be abused easily, particularly when you have a system like fast travel. A dynamic economy would be awesome but it would take a lot of resources to develop and iron out and I'm just not sure if it would prove its worth.

Such a mod would work on a PC but, on a console system . . . . might get dicey. Never the less, I like the idea.

I can't remember any RPG with "dynamic" economy, but certainly a trading minigame where some items are cheaper in one place and sells for high in the other.

It would be interesting to see Van Graff's and BOS paying more to take your EW, Gun Runners and NCR armoury guys for guns, and Legion for Melee/Unarmed weapons etc.

I think it'll go down the Fable road quite fast, making it very unbalanced, if they introduced that.

Bethesda's Pirates of the Caribbean had price fluctuations and trade between eight islands, I think, but it wasn't dynamic in the sense that prices of certain goods other than trade goods (ie. weapons, jewelry, miscellaneous items, etc) had different prices depending on the amount of said item on said island.

True but PotC wasn't an RPG and Akella (the developer) had a history of simulation and naval games (in fact PotC was originally Sea Dogs 2). There are lots of games out there with dynamic economies but very few are RPGs. I could be wrong as I've never played it but didn't Fallout: Tactics feature item devaluation if you sold too much of an item?

I agree that a dynamic economy could be interesting in an RPG, but IMO it wouldn't be a great fit for a game with as narrow a scope as New Vegas

Buying all 9mm ammunition from gunrunners then fast traveling to primm or other town to sell them for profit, wait theree days, rinse and repeat......=Exploit

Red Dead Redemption had something like this, things had different prices in different parts of the map. For example, if you went to the northeast to hunt bears, the best place to sell the bear skin was Mexico.

Even though it wouldn't work and it was a MMO and kinda of an RPG, EVE with it's player driven/run economy was fairly dynamic. It was way easy to abuse though, someone 35 jumps away is offering 20 times more then you current area, just let set travel to safe points only and watch a movie while you travel and you'll be loaded.

But those trade routes don't last long. Eve definitely has the best economy in a game that I can think of since it's essentially run completely by the players.

I don't know how long they lasted, my EVE days ended in July and I was stupidly wealthy for 3 months playtime.

I did enjoy the players running the economy the deals you could find were just staggering.

Fast travel makes this unbalanced.

Plus the Mojave isn't actually that big.

I'd prefer it to be like in Morrowind/ Oblivion where you could really bargain with the traiders.

Yes, I had played some of the Buccaneer's Bounty collection and saw how supply and demand price fluctuations made things interesting. But of course those were more sim-type games then RPGs.





Yes, that's the thing about 'the invisible hand.'" It rewards the earliest birds with the biggest worms, and thus provides the massive incentive for getting goods and services completely distributed. But it goes on until there are a lot of birds and only a few worms. This is essentially what happened to the early ebay pioneers. New technology created new exploits in existing markets. Talk about an MMO!




I understand that someone created a "Fast travel interception" mod for Fallout 3. I.e., if you fast traveled, you would be stopped by a random encounter and forced to fight before you reached your destination. Such a mod could be used to balance out the rewards of an exploit.

But now even I'm beginning to see that this can get very complicated very quickly. Real life itself is pretty complicated as it is. (Which is why some some people prefer games.)

I'm toying with the idea of sticking purely to bartering on my next playthrough. Never selling or buying, just trading one item of value for another. A system like that would've been cool.

Needs a price revamp to the originals pricing on some stuff. With Barter really effecting how much you get back for sellign stuff. So you'll have somethign to do with your money.